I'm bored with REH purism, especially in the Mongoose Conan books. Sure, not all the pastiches were great, but many were. I don't even like the word "pastiche" because it has such a negative connotation. I prefer to think of them as sequels by different writers. :wink: They have the "Conan" brand name on them, so they are "official" enough for me. I just choose to ignore the really bad ones and use the ones I like.
I think it is presumptuous, if not criminal, to discard thirty years worth of material just because it wasn't written by REH. It's still Conan. I've read twenty Conan pastiches since January (plus misc. short stories and comics), and only a couple of them sucked. I don't get what the big deal is. I've read most, if not all, of the novels by Robert Jordan, Karl Edward Wagner, Leonard Carpenter, Steve Perry, John C. Hocking and John Maddox Roberts. They were all great (not that I haven't heard bad things about Perry and Carpenter's later novels, like Conan The Great). The only ones I read that sucked were the ones by Roland Green (Conan The Guardian) and Poul Anderson (Conan The Rebel). Anderson is a decent enough writer [unlike Green] but I just absolutely couldn't get past his liberal use of Set and Mitra making personal appearances and having normal conversations, it read like a bad FR novel in that regard.
Most of my Conan RPG ideas are inspired by the pastiches, not by Howard directly. In fact, I bought the Coming of Conan REH Collection and PREFER the pastiches as RPG inspiration. They fill in so much more detail to the world, which is especially important without a proper Gazetteer available. I mean, you take a novel like Conan And The Treasure of Python and it just goes into so much incredible detail into the Stygian port city of Khemi, for example, or Conan The Rogue and the Royal Burg of Sicas in Aquilonia. You're not going to get that level of detail even in the Road of Kings, I'll wager! Name any pastiche novel I've read and I can probably come up with at least one cool encounter to include in a Conan game pretty quickly.
I think it's wrong to sweep thirty years worth of non-REH Conan under the carpet and pretend they don't exist. If it's such a big deal to keep 'em separated, at least give us a "Conan Pastiche Sourcebook" so we can mix and match material as desired without the REH Purists screaming "You've got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" I mean, without all the pastiche material, there would never have been a Conan movie, comic, or this RPG.
I think it is presumptuous, if not criminal, to discard thirty years worth of material just because it wasn't written by REH. It's still Conan. I've read twenty Conan pastiches since January (plus misc. short stories and comics), and only a couple of them sucked. I don't get what the big deal is. I've read most, if not all, of the novels by Robert Jordan, Karl Edward Wagner, Leonard Carpenter, Steve Perry, John C. Hocking and John Maddox Roberts. They were all great (not that I haven't heard bad things about Perry and Carpenter's later novels, like Conan The Great). The only ones I read that sucked were the ones by Roland Green (Conan The Guardian) and Poul Anderson (Conan The Rebel). Anderson is a decent enough writer [unlike Green] but I just absolutely couldn't get past his liberal use of Set and Mitra making personal appearances and having normal conversations, it read like a bad FR novel in that regard.
Most of my Conan RPG ideas are inspired by the pastiches, not by Howard directly. In fact, I bought the Coming of Conan REH Collection and PREFER the pastiches as RPG inspiration. They fill in so much more detail to the world, which is especially important without a proper Gazetteer available. I mean, you take a novel like Conan And The Treasure of Python and it just goes into so much incredible detail into the Stygian port city of Khemi, for example, or Conan The Rogue and the Royal Burg of Sicas in Aquilonia. You're not going to get that level of detail even in the Road of Kings, I'll wager! Name any pastiche novel I've read and I can probably come up with at least one cool encounter to include in a Conan game pretty quickly.
I think it's wrong to sweep thirty years worth of non-REH Conan under the carpet and pretend they don't exist. If it's such a big deal to keep 'em separated, at least give us a "Conan Pastiche Sourcebook" so we can mix and match material as desired without the REH Purists screaming "You've got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" I mean, without all the pastiche material, there would never have been a Conan movie, comic, or this RPG.